Pangea Day

In this age images are powerful. Powerful enough to divide, to spread fear, to remove hope. Powerful enough to unite, to build trust, to inspire action. Until now images of the many have been held in the hands of the few. Finally that is changing...

Pangea Day is a film festival event which first took place on 10 May2008, in Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, and other cities, and was broadcast live across the world. It was initiated by Jehane Noujaim, who first proposed it at the 2006 TED Awards. According to the festival organizers it is designed "to use the power of film to bring the world a little closer together."

Let's get to what I really would like, which is world peace. And, I know what you're thinking — you're thinking "that poor girl up there, she thinks she's at a beauty pageant, she's not, she's at the TED prize"… but I really do think it makes sense. And the first step to world peace is for people to meet each other.

In this age images are powerful. Powerful enough to divide, to spread fear, to remove hope. Powerful enough to unite, to build trust, to inspire action. Until now images of the many have been held in the hands of the few. Finally that is changing. Millions of people around the world are telling their own stories. For the first time in history we have the chance to see the world differently, to see it through the eyes of the other.

A project like Pangea, which enables us to enter in to the situations of others, imaginatively, is fulfilling what the religions call the Golden Rule... going into one's own experience, and going into other's experience, and seeing the world from another perspective — that's what we desperately need in our dangerously polarized world.

I am doing this because it is a great idea — to realize the language of film is so beautiful, and very personal — the most beautiful films of all are made from the heart the soul and beyond — and that is why I want to be a part of Pangea...